Rangers get off to fast start, overcome mistakes to beat Sabres

BUFFALO — Other than the two points, coach Alain Vigneault struggled to find positives in the Rangers’ 4-2 win over the Sabres Tuesday night.

“It wasn’t our best game,” he said, in a serious understatement. “In the first period, it’d be hard to count the number of turnovers we had. Positives? We got some good goaltending and timely penalty-killing in the end.”

Down 3-0 in the second, the Sabres fought back, drew to 3-2 and threw everything they had against Antti Raanta in the third, outshooting the Blueshirts 19-4. It wasn’t over until J.T. Miller scored into an empty net with one minute to play at First Niagara Center.

“We obviously want to spend more time in their end in the third period,” said Eric Staal, who had a net-front scrum goal waved off when Oscar Lindberg was whistled for goaltender interference on Chad Johnson with 3:03 left in the second. “They had nothing to lose, jumping into the rush. They have some good firepower up front but Rants was good.”

Playing his third consecutive game while Henrik Lundqvist recovers from neck spasms, Raanta finished with 34 saves.

“It was nice to get a couple saves early,” Raanta said. “But later we took the leg off the gas and gave them too much space.”

In the first, with Zach Bogosian in the box for clearing the puck into the crowd, Mats Zuccarello (one goal and two assists) circled in the neutral zone, and spied Derick Brassard hiding unnoticed by the wall on the blue line. He came to the middle behind the defense, went in alone and beat Robin Lehner with a high forehand at 7:30. It was Brassard’s team-leading 24th goal of the season.

In the second, Zuccarello beat Lehner between the legs from the right side at 4:38, and when Brassard dropped a pass for Jesper Fast’s low one-timer that made it 3-0 at 6:05, Johnson came on in relief.

“Panic shot. Went in. I’ll take it,” Zuccarello said. “We didn’t play our best game. In the third, we were trying to do whatever we had to do to win.”

After that goal, the Blueshirts, playing too loose defensively, made incredibly poor decisions, barely escaping their zone, the Sabres got one back when Jack Eichel threaded a pass through Keith Yandle’s skates to Sam Reinhart for a tip past Raanta at 10:12 and cut the lead to 3-2 when Brian Gionta set up Johan Larsson in front at 16:10.

In the third, the Rangers killed two penalties, as the Sabres, who erased a 3-1 lead to beat the Leafs 4-3 on Monday.

Captain Ryan McDonagh tried to put the best spin on the win as possible, especially the defensive effort in the third. “We wanted to have fresh legs all the time in the third,” he said. “You don’t want to get caught in your own zone out of gas. Sometimes that doesn’t allow us to spend as much time in the offensive zone as we’d like to. I like the fact that the PK stepped up in big moments.”

But the Blueshirts’ overall play “is definitely going to be discussed,” said Derek Stepan, who noted Raanta’s contributions. “We talk about the importance of being a backup and Rants has been solid for us, big-time for us.”